


Martyr for a Cause

by WhatBecomesOfYou



Category: The Fosters (TV 2013)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-25
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-06 01:41:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1100919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatBecomesOfYou/pseuds/WhatBecomesOfYou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She would bend over backward to provide for him. Even if she had to sacrifice everything in order to do it.</p><p>Callie-centric look at Callie & Jude's relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Martyr for a Cause

**Author's Note:**

  * For [electrumqueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/electrumqueen/gifts).



The first foster home Callie had been in with was friends of her family who had done fostering off and on through the years. She'd gone to school with their foster daughter Jessie, who became her foster sister – she remembered vividly a conversation she had had with Jessie the first night she was there.

“Keep Jude close to you,” Jessie had said, in the darkness of the room. “Because it's just you and him now. The rest of them – they don't matter a bit.”

She had nodded to herself, without saying a word. She still wasn't used to the fact that her whole life had been turned upside down, and her grandparents couldn't take them in, and she wanted to just take Jude and hide away back with her parents. She wanted her parents back. 

That foster home hadn't lasted very long, because there was some investigation, the details of which Callie had never fully understood. But as she held Jude close to her, pressing tiny kisses into his hair, she knew that Jessie's words would ring through her ears for the rest of her life. “Keep Jude close to you.”

They were words she took deeply to heart.

There weren't many foster homes that would take two of them at once. Sometimes they wouldn't mind taking one of them – and it varied on which ones they wanted, sometimes it was her, more often it was Jude – but very few would take both at the same time. 

She told their case worker, in very blunt terms, “I refuse to be separated from Jude. We're a package deal, him and me.”

“Alright,” he said. “But you know that makes you harder to place.”

“I know. But he's all that I have left. It's him and me.” 

After a while, the foster homes began to blur together – the parents were sometimes well-meaning, sometimes not. She got used to the parents telling her after some short period of time, “We're sorry, Callie, but it's not working out for us.” And then the routine would start again. 

It got to the point where she had a canned speech about herself prepared for the inevitable first day of school at a new school. “Hi, I'm Callie Jacob, and I probably won't be here long enough to get to know many of you. So. Hi.” And then she would withdraw within herself, because why would she want to get to know anyone if she was inevitably going to be leaving in a short time anyway? It would just make things harder on her. Not easier.

She'd had to break two attachments already, with her parents. She didn't want to break any more than she absolutely had to, and with there being absolutely no way that she was ever going to let Jude out of her sight long enough to be considered “broken,” that meant none. 

She was a free agent, hiding behind her hodge-podge wardrobe and unevenly cut hair. She was sullen. Withdrawn. 

It wasn't until she ended up with the Olmsteads that someone tried to draw her out of the shell she was in. The less she thought about Liam – and the things Liam did, and said – the better, because it only served to drive her further into her shell. Her focus became even greater on Jude, and finding the way to beat the system at its own game. Because the only way to get out of the system was to beat it, once you were as far in as they were. 

The smiles that she attempted to plaster on her face were completely falsified, fictions beheld by those around her as maneuvers toward genuine emotion. She would smile, she would try to be pleasant, she would do everything that she could to endear herself to them, especially if they were among the better foster parents.

It really didn't work out, because she kept ending up with the absolute winners of foster parents, and by that, she meant it fully sarcastically. They were the dredges of society, for the most part – people who didn't deserve of the mantle of “parents,” even if they were foster parents, and even though she knew not all parents were that great.

It made her appreciate her own parents all that much more. For all of their faults as parents, and she knew they hadn't been perfect by any means, at least they cared about her and everything about her. And perhaps more importantly for her, they cared about Jude.

It was in one of her more recent homes – the parents had a biological daughter who was about Jude's age, and they hit it off quite well – that she managed to step back from the game-playing long enough to evaluate the situation from an unbiased perspective. 

She would, quite literally, do anything to ensure that Jude got a better life. If she turned eighteen before they found a stable home, she would work as many jobs as she needed to – she was pretty sure that she wouldn't be the worst waitress in the world, for one – in order to prove to the state that she made a suitable guardian for him. She would bend over backward to provide for him. 

Even if she had to sacrifice everything in order to do it.

And that was how she justified what she did, as she threw her bag into Wyatt's car, and mentally adjusted her mindset in the direction of Indiana. She had everything in her grasp – everything she could have ever wanted, a stable home, people who liked her, a good place for Jude – and it was that last factor that weighed heavily on her mind as he drove away.

It was a good place for Jude. It was better than anything she could have ever dreamed to find for him. 

It was too good for her. She was doomed to be a wandering soul, forever seeking her fortune in another place. She couldn't cope when things were too good, because when things were good, there was nothing left for her to fix. 

So she rode off away, thoughts of Jude flickering in her head. She felt bad, of course she did. She'd once told him that she'd never leave.

It was better this way, though. For both of them.

It had to be.


End file.
